Lineable Secures Investment at Wadiz

Seoul-based startup Lineable accomplished on Jan 21 a rare success in securing funds through Wadiz, a domestic crowdfunding platform. With the help of more than 1,500 investors, Lineable, which specializes in production of a smart wristband that aims to prevent missing children by notifying parents of their children’s whereabouts, briskly passed the 20 million won (roughly $20K) threshold to finance its business.

It is notable that Lineable successfully secured investments on both international and domestic crowdfunding platforms. In September of last year, it showed off its potential by successfully securing investment from the world’s largest crowdfunding platform, Indiegogo, hitting funding amount of $40K, well above the set goal of $30K.

Lineable’s success at Wadiz is thought to encourage other promising startups in Korea to make bolder challenges in domestic crowdfunding opportunities. So far, the domestic crowdfunding market has been conventionally thought to be a much more difficult venue for startups to finance their business than overseas ones due to the former’s substantially smaller size. In fact, before Lineable there was no case of promising manufacturing and IT startups in Korea financing their projects through domestic crowdfunding. As a result, most would end up moving beyond the Korean soil for financing, knocking on the doors of international crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

In this sense, Lineable’s success via Wadiz can be considered a milestone that will inspire many other startups with creative ideas to be more confident that they can also successfully raise funds through domestic crowdfunding platform.